Runt of the Litter

31 July 2000
George is as George does.

Winter, several years ago now. My work experience placement in a private hospital; attired in a sputum-brown polyester tunic to protect myself from the body fluids being joyfully exuded by the whiskered patients and bored to the point of schizophrenia. Having perused every Take a Break and The Lady in the waiting area, I was now awaiting the arrival of my mother in her nippy and, compared to the wards, so damn-bright purple joymobile. She didn't come, and I can't remember why now. But I do recall the ninety minute walk home in the cold and slushy rain, and how unsurprised I was at my freezing misery. This was how things were meant to be; this was February.

April may well be the cruellest month, but February is the most pitiful. Fair play on April; at least it has the nads to stand up for what it believes in and not care who gets hurt on the way. Different shades of tempest every day? Go on! And maybe some hailstones and rainbows in for fun and effect darling? February doesn't even have the gall to try thunder - midstrength rain and grey skies stretch its artistic abilities to their feeble maximum. Snow? - but I've sprained my wrist and slush-puppy rain is all I can manage, then bed.

February is arse. In a fit of anthropological whimsy, see old Father Time as a sow, rolling in the metamud of her cosmic sty, pushing out her baby piglet months one by squealing one. Plump little January and December, both right porkers - thirty-one days heavy and still growing! - both with a sprinkling of festive glitter around the ears. The summer triplets June, July and August, tanned and cheerful. The quieter October and November, snuffling merrily in the fallen leaves by their mother. And at the end, choking on the afterbirth, skinny, scrawny, and making enough noise to raise the valiumed, is February.

Wise men have mumbled through their beards, "Good things come in small packages", and, taking all references to paedophilia and wrapping-paper fetishes aside, we could maybe believe that February's one redeeming feature is its size. But no; at least stand the ground and flex your muscles like a man, dammit! It's a jibe; employing dodgy weather for four weeks, then running off as the people's irritation gives way to blind fury; the small child giving you the finger all the way home on the tube, then ducking behind their mum's skirts just as you're about to box their ears.

(Pausing for brief interlude with background music - ices, madam? - I should point out that these words of bile are directed at the British February, not the Australian February, a very different beast. Returning to our piglets, see the last-born now as a walnut-brown sleek and streamlined creature, full of energy and salty goodness. Not a cloud in sight!)

When did this pathological relationship with the shortest month start? Conceivably when my hair was long enough to get frizzy in the pissy rain, or when mock exams started, or after I'd realised that it was the furthest point inland from my birthday. Or when, year after year, I failed to receive gaudy cheap cardboard halfway through it. Make no mistake, this is deliberate. This, men, is war. February's choice of festival says more about its dark motives than any Rorschach blot. Rather than going for the general festival themes of birth, death, guilt and weight-loss, it chooses the bastard do-gooder Valentine. You can't come to the party unless you bring a special guest! And can't you smell the screaming irony in celebrating love, true, eternal and sweet when the rain's bucketing it down outside? Getting between the taxi and the restaurant will soak your shoes alone, not to mention the teddy bear that your angel has bought you. Pah!

So yes. But should we take arms against such feeble tyranny? Death by a thousand paper cuts is still death. As enthused as I am about living to more than my three-score and ten, I have a certain dread of the three-score and ten Februarys that come with it. But perhaps this is our runt's purpose; to make us appreciate its eleven siblings; the best way to make us value the cruelty of our whip-cracking mistress April is to undergo a session with the limpwristed February. Maybe yes; it is for our own good. Bring out the cat o'nine tails and the umbrella.